Work at university is not just for academics
The academy offers opportunities not only for scientists and teachers, but also for professionals focused on law, project management or IT. A beautiful example is the journey of Jana Broncová. She moved from an international company to the Masaryk University Institute of Computing Technology (ICT MUNI). It was here in 2020 that they published an interesting offer for IT, which promised contact with the international environment and an overlap in the form of support for scientists. "I am not a graduate of Masaryk University, and I knew nothing about the institute. I was intrigued by the fact that it was a job at a university for the scientific community and involved collaboration with international colleagues," says Jana, explaining why she was approached with this particular offer.
Originally, she comes from Boskovice, but she graduated from university in Prague and then started working for large commercial companies, first in the capital itself, before accepting a challenging job in China, where she spent four years in an analytical and then a managerial position. “Twelve hours a day was normal, but I had counted on that beforehand. It was an experience that gave me so much and I wanted to go through it. At some point, however, it was time to move on and do more for myself,” recalls the graduate software engineer, for whom it was also important to do something more for society.
The ICT plays an important role at the Masaryk University. It provides IT services to students and the academic and staff community, as well as to international research groups. Thus, it uses expert staff to improve MU's services, but also to push boundaries across the field. Whether one does research in medicine, natural sciences or even sociology, one cannot do without IT and international cooperation today. Specifically, Jana works in a team that manages user accounts and their access in an academic environment. This ranges from university to international scientific team collaborations.
“The personal and human approach here is great. You get the feeling that you are not just a column in an excel spreadsheet. Comparatively, our team is generally younger because we work a lot with students. The atmosphere of such a team is very pleasant and productive - people want to do new things and they are not afraid of change.”
Thanks to her previous experience, she is now in a good position to compare what both environments gave her. At university, she was surprised by the breadth and variability of the workload and that the benefits are not so different from the commercial environment. “The personal and human approach here is great. You get the feeling that you are not just a column in an excel spreadsheet. Comparatively, our team is generally younger because we work a lot with students. The atmosphere of such a team is very pleasant and productive - people want to do new things and they are not afraid of change,” Jana states and adds. “People are expected to be independent and responsible, but there is a lot of room for development and discussion.”
The reward for all this is that one has the opportunity to participate in things that are not just measured in profit but are of long-term benefit to society. “We attract people here to do interesting work. You don't just get to be directly involved in how science and research is done somewhere. I really appreciate that we have the space to do more research on some topics and try different approaches. Not just the one that makes the most money, but the one that really serves best in a given situation,” says Jana, who has changed her place of residence with the change of job and now calls Brno her home.
What she appreciates about Brno is its compactness and infrastructure, the amenities in the city and the countryside in its vicinity. “I would recommend it to anyone considering such a life change. Talk to someone who has already gone through such a change or who has worked in different environments and ask yourself what you really want from life,” says Jana Broncová, listing the things that have helped her make such a big life change.
